Start With a Win

CHAPTER 2Our Missions Set the Playbook

“Be strong enough to listen, wise enough to ask, and kind enough to help.”

—Adam Contos

Life is a series of experiences and interactions. Each is a mission. Our actions and attitudes within these missions form our mindset and create a unique playbook for how each of us lives our lives. Companies have playbooks, too, developed and honed based on mission experiences of the company and its people.

As youngsters our imaginations take us, cardboard box and all, on that pretend mission to Mars or spur that glam and glitter dress-up doll tea party. As an adult, the late-night run to the grocery, the walk next door to help a neighbor, the early-morning meeting with your boss to avoid a personnel crisis, even the nuances of closing a hard-earned sale, all are missions that play a role in our psychological training for life.

The memories of these missions imprint our brains with responses. Like a computer search for information about something, your brain now has a situation response instead of “data not found.” This is how we learn. Each time we do something, we learn from it, and we store those learnings away for future options in life.

When I first started as a contract employee at RE/MAX, I had no experience in the real estate business other than hanging out with a great lifelong friend and his mom, a very successful RE/MAX agent in the 1980s and ’90s. I had spent the previous dozen years in law enforcement. But no matter where we go or what ...